Women, Later Sainted

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph captures a lighted device at night. — Photo by Trevin Rudy on Unsplash

I disappear as I turn sideways, dissolving into the split wall, 
humming as my face rests in the white light of the refrigerator.

I can survive here for years, hiding out within the kitchen walls, 
between white bread, Milanos, a jar of stone mustard, a rotting bell
      pepper.

So much of me turns into nothing. In the sixteenth century, women 
      who starved
themselves to death were considered closer to God and later sainted.

To be alive in this way is not so awful until the very end. The sun 
      still shines
on my body dissolving into light. Still the air smells beautiful 
      beneath bone.

I will stay in this world as long as it will have me, cradled between 
      shadows,
thinning as the leaves change color in my final hours, brittle and 
      falling.

Lord, if you come looking for me, I will be in the space my body 
      once was.

Alaina Bainbridge

is a second-year MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work has appeared in Cagibi, Dreamers Magazine, and Blacklist. She has forthcoming publications in Colorado Review and the William and Mary Review. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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